On Sat, 17 Sep 2005, Louise Stewart wrote: > For weeks now, nearly every day, at no particular time of the day, I?m > unable to send or receive email. I can still connect to the Internet, > however. And after a short while ? maybe 15-30 minutes ? the email if fine > again. I have called Earthlink on several occasions to find out what is > causing this. They offer suggestions to re-set certain things, but it?s > never a permanent solution. > > Tonight during one of the timeouts, I emailed Earthlink to inquire. This is > my reply from them: > > We understand that you are having problems sending and receiving email. > > Because you are able to browse, it appears that there is no relation between > your problem and the earthlink service. You will have to inquire with the > provider of your email program what the cause of the problem is. > > If you still have problems, please describe them. > +++++++++++++++++++ > > So my question is, isn?t Earthlink my email provider? Are they talking about > my contacting Microsoft about Entourage? I?m very confused, and BTW, am not > the least bit technical, so if this question is dumb, sorry.
Earthlink's answer is, to be perfectly frank, total bull. It is entirely possible for you to be able to connect to other parts of the Internet while Earthlink's mail server is down or unreachable. That you can reach other sites is irrelevant - to be able to read or send mail you must both be able to connect to the machine(s) that run the mail server and the mail server must actually be running. In fact, depending on how you connect and their network topology, your traffic to other sites might not be using any part of Earthlink's network. For instance, my ISP (Speakeasy) has contracted out most dialin POPs (Points of Presence). In many locations, they use the same dialup provider Earthlink uses. When I'm travelling and dialed in through one of these POPs, my traffic to other sites not on Speakeasy's network never goes on Speakeasy's network at all much less anywhere near Speakeasy's mail server. Something similar applies to you and even if you are directly connected to Earthlink's network, as I said above, it say nothing about the state of Earthlink's mail server. Unfortunately, this is about what I expect from level 1 support as these people rarely understand how the various parts work together. -- Larry Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.letterrip.com/> old-archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
